IBM Retail | SAP retail solutions on IBM infrastructure

The Retail Trilogy provides SAP retail solutions on IBM infrastructure, which can assist in all phases of your business. Read this PDF to find out more on efficient POS data management, supply chain planning, and retail information analysis.

3.
Introduction
Many leading retail companies have recognized the value of implementing an SAP Retail solution on IBM infrastructure. IBM and SAP
have responded to the needs of the retail industry by completing a comprehensive proof of technology for the latest versions of the
mission-critical SAP Retail applications on IBM infrastructure. The results are relevant for small to very large businesses.
High volume point-of-sale data, combined with the increasing requirement for transaction data to be turned into actionable business
information, represent ongoing challenges for retailers of all sizes.
These challenges demand extreme performance and scalability from the supporting applications and IT infrastructure. Additionally,
retailers are looking for reassurance that they can match the application with the infrastructure that best meets their performance,
reliability, and cost requirements.
Together, IBM and SAP initiated a rigorous, multi-month, multi-million dollar proof of technology project for the industry. Our overall
aim was to demonstrate the fusion of application with infrastructure in a combined solution for the retail industry.
Until now, comprehensive and up-to-date performance and configuration information has not been readily available. Without this,
retailers have not been able to optimize their investment for the core time critical elements of the SAP for Retail portfolio spanning
multiple systems on a choice of platforms. These documented tests enable our customers to optimize their investment in SAP for
Retail running on IBM platforms.
We conducted this extensive project, fusing application and infrastructure, to:
• Prove the scalability of defined SAP Retail industry processes on IBM technology
• Optimize the architecture and conduct tests that would provide guidance for detailed sizing and configuration
• Optimize the application configuration for common high volume retail scenarios.
This solution brief and the accompanying white paper lay out the background, approach, and results of the study. The results
convincingly demonstrate the viability and value that the fusion of SAP and IBM technology brings to the retail industry. IBM and SAP
are ready to support your organization in assuring your technology investment.
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4.
Background to the Retail Trilogy Project
A trilogy of SAP components to prove
Every retailer is unique in terms of their data volumes and specific implementation choices around an SAP application footprint, and
yet remarkably similar in many respects. They are confronted by the same requirements to meet deadlines and service level
agreements, and to do so within the constraints of cost-effective IT configurations. Until now, comprehensive and up-to-date
performance and configuration information has not been readily available. IBM and SAP have now provided concrete proof points
using industry relevant business volumes.
SAP provides retailers with industry-leading solutions to assist in all phases of their business. For this set of performance tests, we
focused on the highest volume, most compute-intensive portions of the solution. These are the functional components that produce
the greatest time-critical processing demands, and as a result are where our largest customers most desire extensive testing of the
latest versions of the solution sets from SAP and IBM (Figure 1).
Insight Into All Areas Of
Your Business Streamline Supply
Chain Operations
Anticipate
Shopper Needs
Ensure an Inspired
Shopping Experience
A Solid Foundation for
Corporate Operations
Figure 1: SAP Retail: a comprehensive, integrated solution
The tests focused on three areas that present time-critical and scalability concerns for our clients, and exhaustively exercised the
related “trilogy” of components of the SAP solution to discover or confirm configuration best practices that we can now share with our
customers:
• SAP® Point of Sale Data Management application (POS DM) manages the flow of information between store
devices and servers in store, and back office
• SAP Merchandising for Retail, which is the Retail version of SAP Enterprise Resource Planning application
(ERP), is the core solution for corporate data and business processes, within the SAP for Retail solution portfolio
• SAP Forecasting and Replenishment application (F&R) is the powerful engine that manages the retail supply
chain.
Note: This Solution Brief will use the abbreviations indicated in parentheses above for sake of limited space in graphics.
One additional abbreviation to be used: BW = SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW)
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6.
goals of the Retail Trilogy joint project
Together IBM and SAP initiated a rigorous, multi-month, multi-million dollar proof of technology project for the retail industry. Our
overall aim was to demonstrate the fusion of application with infrastructure in a combined solution for retail-specific applications.
The overall goals were to:
• Prove the scalability of defined SAP Retail industry processes on IBM technology
• Optimize the architecture and conduct tests that would provide guidance for detailed sizing and configuration
• Optimize the application configuration for common high volume retail scenarios.
The capacity requirements
In order to measure capacity requirements the test scenarios were monitored and scaled up incrementally to ultimately represent a
retailer with five distribution centers, 2,385 stores, up to 75,000 articles per store and two years of historical sales data. POS Inbound
consumption data represented up to 34.86 million unique article/store combinations, resulting in 17.43 million purchase order lines.
Retailers come in many sizes and forms. The Trilogy project took this variety into consideration. Different store types and profiles were
created, from small shops with an average of 2000 Stock Keeping Units (SKUs), up to hyper markets with tens of thousands of active
SKUs.
Figure 3 recaps the distribution of number of articles (SKUs) included in each of the 2,385 stores.
Distribution of Stores via Articles
120
100
Number of Stores
80
60
40
20
0
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000
Number of Articles per Store
Figure 3: Distribution of articles over 2,385 stores
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8.
Critical time window processing
The substantial workload must be executed within a defined production time window, with system resources optimized to run at peak
efficiency, handling maximum volumes. During this critical phase of processing there is synchronization between POS DM, ERP and
F&R. There is no margin for degraded performance or a system outage that would impact next-day deliveries. Figure 5 illustrates the
processing steps (in orange) that typically take place during the critical time window.
Time-critical
Not Time-
Release and send Order Proposals from F&R to ERP
Send Consumption data from POS DM to F&R
Process Consumption data in F&R
Not Time-critical critical
Create Outbound Deliveries in ERP
Send IDocs from POS DM to ERP
FRP-Run in F&R
Create IDocs in POS DM
Create Orders in ERP
Summarise non-
Summarise non-aggregated sales data in POS DM aggregated sales data
in POS DM
Write non-aggregated
Write non-aggregated sales data to
sales data to
POS DM Tlog tables POS DM Tlog tables
Post Warehouse Post Store Update Process
IDocs Post Warehouse
Goods Issues in Goods Receipts MD, Stock, Goods Issues
ERP in ERP OP in F&R in ERP in ERP
06.00 12.00 18.00 24.00 06.00 12.00
Figure 5: Critical time window overview
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9.
Test Design and Scope
It is possible to conduct performance “benchmark” tests in laboratory conditions that do not reflect realistic customer scenarios. This
was not the case for the Trilogy project. Customers can be very confident in the results of this proof of technology as standard
application configurations were used that represent normal, real life, very high volume retail business processes. The testing
confirmed and augmented SAP best practice configuration and system sizing guidelines, which are available to all customers.
Optimized SAP Retail components
Real life scenarios monitored by experts
A cornerstone of the joint proof of technology tests was the direct involvement of SAP expert application staff to monitor the
application behavior, and IBM experts to monitor the underlying architecture to identify and correct potential bottlenecks in the
application. This streamlining activity ensured optimum application throughput while maximizing the utilization of the features of the
supporting infrastructure.
It is important to note that the components and configuration throughout our testing represented authorized and supported elements
of the SAP and IBM solutions for retail and were consistent with our joint understanding of best practice for large-scale retail. This was
a test of practical application of the SAP software under common but large scale business conditions not an abstract to prove scale
alone.
Choice of IbM infrastructure
Allowing customers platform choice
The SAP architecture is flexible and runs on all IBM platforms. In practice, retail landscapes often include a mix of different
complementary applications and infrastructure that must be accommodated.
Many retail customers are running their SAP solution on UNIX platforms. Often these UNIX platforms are combined with mainframes,
so it was vital to provide valuable insights and guidance to customers of both. This proof of technology spans both the major IBM
infrastructure platforms.
demonstrating how IbM technology delivers results
The IBM servers and infrastructure deployed were critical to meeting the extreme challenges of these tests. These leading IBM
technologies also provide the most complete capabilities to meet customer non-functional requirements, such as high availability,
continuous operations, accounting compliance, security, automated administration and more.
Showing the inherent scalability of the database
Regardless of platform, IBM database management systems are highly tuned with SAP software for high performance, high
availability and scalability for SAP applications. This tuning is an ongoing activity by IBM and SAP development teams, who provide a
wealth of expertise in matching functionality to application requirements for new industry challenges such as these.
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10.
Test infrastructure deployed
For Phase One of the tests, all three SAP components were installed on POWER6 595 (see Figure 6). The database DB2 on AIX
shared resources with the application servers. This allowed tests to take full advantage of all the functionality benefits of the solution
stack, notably resource sharing on POWER6, plus data compression and multi-dimensional clustering functionalities using DB2 LUW
database technology.
PowerVM enables the flexible allocation of resources to dynamically adjust server capabilities from small to very large environments.
This was the ideal basis for testing the individual component scalability and performance during the Retail Trilogy project and ideal
for load consolidation in production environments. The high-end IBM System Storage DS8300 storage server used high speed disks
and fiber infrastructure.
For Phase Two of the tests, the overall capacity was increased with the addition of an IBM System z server as database server (Figure
7). The application servers remained on POWER6 595, while the databases were migrated to System z, using the same storage
technology. This enabled scale-out of the application by freeing resources for additional application server capacity and
consolidating the database servers on System z. This step increases capacity as well as adds further protection through the
continuous availability capability of the System z.
System z workload management provides the means of consolidating distinct workloads and ensuring service levels for the individual
SAP application servers. This functionality was exploited to achieve increased scalability of the integrated solution in the final massive
scale out, using multiple high-end application servers.
POS DM ERP F&R
Application Servers on POWER6 595
Phase 1
DB Server POWER6 595
IBM System Storage DS8300 turbo
Figure 6: Phase one test infrastructure
Figure 7: Phase two test infrastructure
POS DM ERP F&R
Application Servers on POWER6 595
Phase 2
DB Server System z
IBM System Storage DS8300 turbo
Figure 7: Phase two test infrastructure
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11.
Proof point testing
To gather the information necessary to address industry requirements for different size retail customers and verify results for the end-
to-end, integrated SAP solution, a variety of technical tests were defined and executed:
• Establish scalability by component: Good scalability means that processing time can be reduced by increasing
infrastructure capacity, while limited scalability means that processing time is constrained.
• Ensure consistency and linearity by component: Ensure that when increasing data volumes, the volumes are
processed in a predictable way with regard to time and resources. This verification helps ensure ample room for
customer growth and reduces potential production risks.
• Test high-load capability by component: Measure the high volume and massively parallel capability of individual
components. This establishes the maximum throughput given all test resources.
• Integrate all components on the critical path: Test target volumes for critical path steps in a real business context
by running all process components within the available capacity as in production environments.
A trilogy of components to be tested first individually
As the project name reflects, this proof of technology covers three key components of the replenishment cycle. The project focuses
on each solution individually and then looks at the interaction of all three solutions and the overall replenishment business process.
POS dM
As shown in Figure 8, POS DM receives sales data, executes master data checks for stores and products to ensure that only
consistent data is processed downstream, then prepares and aggregates sales information for ERP and F&R.
SAP POS Data Management is specifically designed for high-performance upload of POS data and enables subsequent analysis of
the data. The key steps selected for the test scope were:
• Processing of non-aggregated sales data
• Creation of aggregated sales Intermediate Document (IDoc). An IDoc is a “container” for exchanging data
between SAP components, and between SAP and non-SAP systems
• Sending IDocs to ERP
• Sending consumption data to F&R.
POS DM
IDocs ERP
POS
Inbound
BAPI
Transaction
database
Aggre- Consumption
Standards
Sales
gate data
Transactions
VMI F&R
XML Access Module
BW BW
Masterdata
Figure 8: POS DM architectural overview
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13.
F&R
Supply chain planning solutions need to help retailers to strike the ideal balance between minimizing inventory ownership and
maximizing customer service. SAP Forecasting and Replenishment uses sophisticated algorithms and automation technology to
accurately forecast sales, including promotions and events which influence demand (Figure 10).
Specifically designed for retailers, F&R is made to be scalable, reach a high degree of automation and reduce user intervention for
critical business situations with its inherent alert system.
Scalability and performance testing was performed for all relevant store replenishment tasks which must be processed during the
overnight critical path processing window:
• Process consumption data
• Run forecasting and replenishment including exception handling, and create order proposals
• Transfer of order proposals to ERP
F&R
Master Open
Stock DIFs Sales POS DM
Transfer of data Orders
relevant data PIPE
Forecast and
Requirement Calculation
POS DM
ERP
Requirement Exception
Quantity Optimization Handling
Automatic Order Proposal Release
Transfer of Management
Order
Proposals
into Orders Manual BW
Replenishment
Vendor Provision of forecast & other data for cooperative scenarios
Figure 10: F&R architectural overview
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14.
The trilogy tested as an integrated solution
The objective of the integration test was to demonstrate the ability of the complete application and infrastructure solution to handle the
critical time window for very high volumes. This scenario proved the end to end solution, including the interfaces and flow between
solution components. It confirmed the high-volume processing with the concurrent load requirements of each component, consistent
with what is found in a customer production environment.
Figure 11 shows the logical sequence of the integrated process steps and their integration points. The numbering indicates the
sequence of the steps within the replenishment cycle of the integrated retail scenario (including the solution components of POS DM,
ERP and F&R).
POS DM collects and aggregates sales data, and transforms it into IDocs (1) that will be sent to the ERP system (2). There, the
necessary stock and value updates will be performed to keep consistent inventory information (3). At the same time the sales data
information will be fed into F&R as consumption time series (4) to form the basis for the forecast calculation and to adjust the stock
information so the replenishment calculation can begin (5).
The processing of sales data IDocs in ERP and the processing of consumption data in F&R run in parallel. Once the replenishment
run is finished, the order proposals are fed back into ERP’s relevant buffer tables (6), where they will be converted into purchase
orders to suppliers and Distribution Centers (7). Once this is completed, the logistics execution is kicked off with the creation of the
outbound delivery documents (8). The critical path ends with the processing of the so-called ‘delivery due’ list.
Steps 9-11, outside of the critical path, complete the full cycle necessary for follow-up inventory postings in the distribution centers
and receiving stores.
POS DM
225 mil sales transactions
Write non-aggregated sales data to inbound queue
Write non-aggregated sales data to TLOG
1
Aggregate sales data from TLOG
35 mil line items
Create sales IDOCS from aggregated sales data
2 Send sales IDOCS to ERP Send consumption to F&R 4 F&R
35M Line Items
Process consumption data
80 mil prod/loc 5
ERP FRP-Run
35 mil line items
3 Process IDOCS (update inventory, post FI) Send order proposals to ERP
6
17 mil line items
10 mil purchase order items
7 Create Purchase Order (NB & UB) External Vendor
7 mil line items
7 mil delivery items
8 Create outbound deliveries External WMS
Post warehouse goods issues
17 mil line items
Post store goods receipt = Sequence of execution with focus on critical path
Figure 11: Integrated test scenarios
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15.
Results: Highlights of Proof-points
Summary of results
• IBM and SAP have jointly demonstrated the applicability of our solutions for high volume retail. In each area of
the Retail Trilogy project we have significantly exceeded (by factors of 2-3x) previously published or supported
volumes.
• We demonstrated performance for the current versions of the SAP application – not only the performance of the
individual application components, but through our integrated scenario, the viability of the complete store
replenishment cycle for large scale retail.
• Results were not just demonstrated on a single technology, but on a choice of platforms that retailers find
relevant and commonly use.
• Utilizing best practice configuration of the SAP application and the features of the IBM database, storage, and
platform we have optimized the joint performance of our combined solution.
• Most importantly, we demonstrated this with common, large-scale business conditions using only authorized
and supported elements of our combined solution.
Sales data into insights
Consistent with the volumes of very large customers, 225 million sales line items were aggregated into ~35 million consumption line
items for processing by other SAP Retail components, other SAP applications, and/or use by other applications, in only 31 minutes.
That consumption data was transferred to F&R, where it was processed in 25 minutes. Thus, both aggregation and processing of the
aggregated ~35 million store location products in F&R was completed in less than an hour. This represented nearly triple the result of
the most previously released information by SAP for POS DM and its integration with ERP.
Hardened transaction processing
The processing within ERP, including the data flows between POS DM, F&R and ERP, represented nearly triple the volumes
previously tested.
Forecasting and replenishment to the extreme
Our results demonstrated peak nightly processing of 80 Million item-store combinations (also referred to as product-locations) in less
than 4 hours. This allows large retailers the flexibility to evaluate all store/Distribution Center/item combinations to be executed in a
nightly process if desired, or to continue to segment the processing to support even higher volumes of item/location. This doubled the
volumes previously validated by SAP for the forecasting and replenishment processor run (FRP).
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16.
Results from the independent component tests
During the independent component tests, each SAP application workload was tested on a dedicated server with the full volumes of
data, in order to establish the maximum throughput possible on a single server. These results are shown in Figure 12.
While providing valuable information about portions of the solution, individual component testing excludes the actual inter-system
dataflow, coordination, concurrent load, and other effects as these cannot be tested in unitary tests. Hence, testing of the complete
business process was accomplished during integrated scenario testing.
Process FRP Run
Consumption
Send consumption Data data 80M product/locations
225M Line Items 34.8M Line +Create Order Proposals
F&R
Items 17.8M Line Items
31min
25min 3h 56min
Create Create Create
Sales IDocs Purchase Order
Process IDocs
34.8M Line Orders Deliveries
Items
139402 IDocs
17.42M 6.97M
ERP
3h 26min
3min 2h 03min 1h 6min
POS DM
Figure 12: Independent Component Tests
Additional benefit to retailers
As part of the individual component tests, we captured information for estimating the system size requirements for the SAP Retail
environment. While carefully and incrementally scaling the volumes and applied optimization capabilities of the IBM infrastructure, we
also monitored and documented the performance of the application environment. This enabled us to construct the most
comprehensive information for the sizing of the SAP Retail application ever available.
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17.
Results from the Integrated Solution
In the integrated scenario, we demonstrated the viability of the critical path for the complete Trilogy solution for large scale retail,
taking into account the inter-system dataflow, co-ordination, concurrent load and other effects inherent in actual retail environments.
We demonstrated the end-to-end process with the same data that we used to demonstrate the scale of the individual Trilogy
components.
Our results in Figure 13 showed that we could process the same high volumes we demonstrated individually, in a stable, scalable,
integrated environment.
Importantly, we demonstrated that this could be achieved in a window well within the nightly processing requirements for most retailers.
In the integrated scenarios, concurrent processing of the critical path delivered the following results:
• POS Sales data, aggregated into approximately 35 million consumption line items, processed concurrently by
F&R, and by ERP (for inventory update and financial posting) in under 5 hours.
• The final steps of the integrated scenario were the transfer of the optimized order information from F&R to Retail-
centric ERP transactions such as purchase ordering and delivery creations.
• The order proposals from F&R received by ERP were converted into 17+ million order line items and nearly 7
million delivery lines in just over 3 hours.
This large scale processing enables retailers to have confidence in the scalability and stability of the combined SAP and IBM solution.
Process
Consumption FRP Run
Consumption Data data 80M product/locations F&R
Prepare and send 34.8M Line +Create Order Proposals
225M Line Items Items 17.8M Line Items
22 minutes 48 minutes 3 hours 46 minutes
Transfer Order
Summarizati Proposals
on
Transfer IDocs 17.8M Line Items
Create Sales
IDocs
139402 IDocs ERP 4 hours 22 minutes Create
Purchase
Create
Outbound
22 minutes
34.8M Line Orders Deliveries
Items Process IDocs
17.42M 6.97M
6 minutes 139402 IDocs
2h08 mn 1h04mn
34.8 MLine Items
POS DM 3 hours 43 minutes
Figure 13: Integrated scenario processing times
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18.
Optimized infrastructure enables unrivaled results
The proof of technology aspects of the Trilogy project have demonstrated that the careful choice of the right infrastructure is critical for
optimal results. In particular, the underlying database and the virtualization technology deployed have a huge impact.
db2 – the optimized database for SAP
DB2 database features played a crucial role in achieving the performance results. F&R in particular made direct use of the DB2
database features for partitioning and clustering, which played a crucial role in improving SAP parallelization of the workload and
enhancing the performance of huge block insert and delete operations. The benefits were significantly increased throughput and
shorter runtimes.
In addition, benefits of features such as automatic storage management, memory self-tuning and software or hardware compression
reduced hardware requirements, which result in an overall better/price performance ratio. This was demonstrated in DB2 LUW by
improved runtimes in our testing with:
• 56% less database space required, so fewer disks and reduced DB administration time for backup and restore
• Up to 66% less Input/Output (I/O) requests, so faster data access
• 57% less database memory utilization, so hardware cost savings
Optimized total cost of ownership through virtualization and resource sharing
The more the infrastructure footprint can be reduced, while still meeting the application requirements, the less investment is required
and the lower the total cost of ownership (TCO).
The PowerVM shared processor pools allowed multiple SAP systems to be housed on a single server. For the integrated retail
scenario, all three systems share the processor resources according to the requirements of their processing load and according to a
defined priority scheme.
The graph below (Figure 14) depicts the peak requirements of all three systems during an integrated run. This shows the processor
capacity which would be required for dedicated systems. As these peaks can occur at different times, PowerVM allowed us to meet
the workload requirements with only 48% the total number of processors required on non-virtualized systems. This is a tremendous
saving in hardware and software resources. Physical resource sharing allows the optimal use of infrastructure investment.
Physical Resource Requirements at High Load per Solution
Component
60
ERP; 63.7
50
Physical CPUs
40
POS
F&R
30 F&R; 36.5
POS; 32.7 ERP
20
10
0
Peak Requirement per SAP System
Figure 14: Peak requirements on dedicated servers
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19.
On the database server, System z, we demonstrate the resource sharing for the three concurrent databases. In this design, POS DM
and ERP shared the same virtual machine, as their peak loads occur at different stages in the processing chain. Again, we
demonstrate how the peak requirements of nearly 20 Central Processors (CPs) are met by sharing just over 12 physical CPs (Figure
15).
Since the average load on these resources was very low, at any given point in time the remaining processor power was available for
other active work. Work Load Manager (WLM) and Processor Resource / System Manager (PR-SM) ensured the system’s priority
scheme matched the company’s Service Level Objectives (SLO). As a result we were able to over-allocate processing resources,
confident that we would be able to meet critical response time and batch run time targets.
The combined System z database and POWER6 595 application server architecture demonstrated how the integrated retail scenario
could be implemented to satisfy the strenuous retail industry business SLOs. With this architecture we were able to apply the best
technical characteristics of each system to specific business requirements of the retail solution.
SAP Retail
DBs LPARs - CPU utilization - Integrated run
14
12
10
8
# CP
6
4
2
0
Max Avg Max Avg
POS DM & ERP F&R
Figure 15: Peak requirements with resource sharing
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20.
Proving scalability and stability of the integrated solution
Stability under test
One proof of stability is to answer the question: “what happens as the volume increases?” Does the solution remain stable as the
requirements increase?
Here in Figure 16, we proved that the resulting processing times, for the complete integrated business process, remain stable over
time and volume. We started with a medium retail volume and then doubled this volume; achieving this in somewhat less than double
the run-time. The latter also proved the integrated process stability; executing an extended volume over nearly 13 hours.
Stability: Volume vs Time - Double Volume = Double Runline
40 Million Store/Articles 80 Mill Store/Articles
14:24
Processing Window (Hrs)
Integrated End to End
12:00
09:36
12:55
07:12
04:48
06:46
02:24
00:00
Volumes 1x to 2x
Figure 16: Stability over time and volume
Scalability under test
As the volumes of data grow, the processing window allowed by the business is most likely to remain fixed. We need assurance that
the solution is able to handle increasing volumes of data in the same processing time by scaling out over more resources.
In answer to scalability, we proved that by using additional resources we can reduce the longest running processing steps. During the
window of load, where both ERP and F&R are concurrently processing the two highest load requirements, we showed that by using
double the application server resources we can cut both the runtimes in half (Figure 17). This demonstrates that the required volumes
can be handled in the business’s required window by applying additional resources.
Scalability - Resources vs Concurrent Load Runtimes
80Mil Product/Location Volume
09:36
Highload Runtimes in Hours
08:24
08:52
07:12 07:39
06:00
64CPUs
04:48
128CPUs
03:36
03:46 03:43
02:24
01:12
00:00
FRP 1 to 2 servers ERP 1 to 2 servers
Figure 17: Double resources to halve the time
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21.
Choice of IBM Infrastructure for Retail
The Trilogy testing spanned several IBM infrastructure platforms to address the requirements of multiple retail sizes. These included
two POWER6 infrastructures, for small and medium business requirements, and two high-end infrastructures, for the large and very
large, which combined the strengths of the IBM System z with POWER6. This huge investment in infrastructure and effort allows us to
provide results which are relevant to retailers of many different sizes and with different requirements.
Scaling up to the IbM mainframe (System z)
Following the complete series of individual tests on POWER6 595, the test included the migration of POS DM, ERP and F&R
databases from POWER6 595 to System z. This is the potential situation that some existing customers might find themselves in if they
are not able to meet:
• Security demands
• Availability requirements
• Batch window constraints
• Scalability requirements.
All existing POWER6 595 application servers were connected to the System z database server and all resources were retained to
support the scaled-up configuration. Moving distributed databases from UNIX, Linux, or Windows is a safe process for customers,
which is supported by SAP and IBM.
In practice, using SAP standard tools built on DB2 for z/OS capabilities, it was possible to import, reorganize and compress each
database in one step, then proceed rapidly with the next phase of testing.
Verification of storage demand
By adding a layer of storage virtualization, using the SAN Volume Controller (Figure 18), we demonstrated a flexible growth scenario
and determined the optimal storage requirements for the different retailer sizes. The real life storage requirements are not so much
determined by the amount of data on the disks, but by the behavioral requirements of the application.
By scaling out the I/O footprint in relation to the growing demand of the increasing application load, we were able to verify the I/O
requirement for throughput and performance. This proof point demonstrates a non-disruptive growth scenario for fiber storage
environments and provides the basis for very precise storage sizing, which reduces risk and aids planning.
Size1
Storage Virtualization Create 10 LUNS
Layer: SAN Volume
Controller
Size 1
Size 2
Database Create 20 LUNS
Server Virtual Size2
Disks
Size3
Size 3 Create 40 LUNS
Increasing IO Storage Virtualization with LUNs on Physical
Storage Server added
requirement Non-disruptive scale-out
as required
As DB scales up to meet increasing load
Figure 18: Storage virtualization
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22.
Infrastructure that best meets requirements
Incubation test configuration
The “incubator” is an IBM hardware landscape installed within the SAP development computer center in Walldorf, Germany, for ease
of access by SAP development. The architecture shown in Figure 19 was based on a midrange POWER6 system and a midrange
storage server to provide a reference architecture for small- to medium-size retail customers.
This is where the systems were first implemented and functionally tested. Each solution was similar to a customer implementation
insofar as the data design and layout was intended to replicate real-life business processes. Data loading was to prepare for high-
volume tests and historical data was generated for two years of sales data on a weekly level, 30 days on a daily level.
Phase One Mass test configuration
Following validation of the test scenarios on the incubation system in Walldorf, the complete test environment was transferred to the
IBM Customer Solution Center in Montpellier, France. The Phase One Mass test architecture is shown in Figure 20.
This high-end POWER6 landscape consisted of the newest model of the IBM UNIX servers, POWER6 595 64-core 5GHz with 512GB
of memory in collaboration with a high-end storage server DS8300 with 128GB cache and 384 available disks, configured in RAID 5.
In this configuration, where the application servers and DB servers are all housed on a single 595, POWER6 processor sharing is
used to allow the system resources to follow the processing load across the integrated landscape. POWER6 supports multiple shared
processor pools which were used to implement a firm priority system and controlled distribution of resources, so that the databases
and SAP central instances had priority.
virtual Ethernet Backbone
POS DM SAN
POS DM DB2
CI+DB V9.5
POS-DM
F&R F&R CI+DB SAN
DS5100 18TB
virtual Ethernet Backbone
DB2 DB2 DB2 ERP CI+DB DB2
ERP V9.5 V9.5 V9.5 V9.5
ERP
POS DM ERP F&R
POS DM AS
DB2
V9.5
F&R
F&R AS
ERP AS
DS8300 Turbo
Dual Frame
POWER6 570 80TB
16 CPU 3.5GHz POWER6 595
64 CPUs 5GHz
Figure 19: Incubation Figure 20: Phase One Mass test configuration
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delivering unique capabilities with IbM technologies
This project is another example of the shared goal of enabling efficient integration between SAP applications and the IBM Dynamic
Infrastructure.
POWER6 System
IBM Power System servers are the leading choice for enterprise SAP customers on UNIX because of their built-in performance and
virtualization features, as well as their reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) characteristics. This platform is the leading RAS
solution within the distributed server community.
Processing demands continue to grow, so performance matters. IBM Power systems deliver leading benchmark results for SAP
solutions with fewer processors than competitive systems. The ability to concentrate more SAP instances onto fewer servers while
absorbing increased workloads without corresponding increases in server capacity, offers the potential to achieve new levels of cost
effectiveness. Virtualization is the key technology trend in SAP system infrastructures and this project demonstrates just how IBM
Power systems meet scalability demands while delivering exceptional performance.
IBM PowerHA for AIX® (formerly High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing – HACMP™) provides a mature clustering solution,
commonly used in SAP implementations to protect the SAP databases and application servers from outages; planned or unplanned.
System z
System z delivers extreme business value through industry-leading security, availability, scalability, virtualization, and management
capabilities, components of which have been inherited by POWER6 595. System z can simplify and reduce costs through
consolidation with a high degree of automation, and also offers leading high availability solutions to limit the business impact of SAP
downtime, resulting in reduced profits and lost productivity.
System z is able to consistently maintain high levels of system utilization (90-100%) while ensuring that high priority business
processes meet service level objectives (SLO). This characteristic reduces power consumption, and footprint requirements, and
allows an enterprise consolidation which reduces operational requirements thereby reducing total cost of ownership (TCO).
By running the SAP databases on System z for the integrated retail scenario, we were able to demonstrate the vital role of System z for
very large scalable SAP databases based on these features:
• Hardware data compression
• System offload with the z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) for database processing
• Extended accounting capabilities
• Workload Management (WLM) enabled a higher priority for database processing of defined processes.
This project is another example of IBM and SAP working together to achieve their shared goals of enabling efficient integration
between SAP applications and IBM’s Dynamic Infrastructure, with each component playing a crucial role in delivering the target
results.
IbM storage
IBM System Storage DS8000™ solutions are designed to deliver robust, flexible, highly available, reliable and cost-effective disk
storage to support continuous operations for large enterprise and mission-critical workloads. They offer improved data protection
through striped disks with dual parity (RAID 6) which can recover from the loss of two disks.
IBM products help organize and manage a storage environment that can better accommodate explosive data growth while
simplifying administration and addressing rising costs. IBM offers traditional hard disk storage as well as solid state disk storage for
hot spot data structures.
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SAN Volume Controller (SVC)
SVC is used to virtualize the storage, which increases utilization, handles peak loads and avoids performance bottlenecks very
efficiently. It also reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) with reduced power and cooling expenses while streamlining administration.
In this project, we used SVC for the most throughput-demanding portion of the trilogy, F&R, as shown in Figure 23. SVC made it
possible to easily and quickly move data online between different sized groups of disks. We determined the number of disks sufficient
to handle a given load and also created a precise storage sizing profile. Besides deploying SVC to better manage growing data
volumes associated with normal operations, customers enjoy increased flexibility in migrating the production environment to newer
storage technology without disruption or down time.
db2
IBM database systems on each platform are always specially optimized for SAP software by joint IBM and SAP development teams
as part of the normal delivery process. Benefits of this collaboration include:
• Simplified and tailored setup
• Performance gains at lower cost
• Data compression (software or hardware)
• Index compression
• DB partitioning
• Online backup
• One stop service and support via SAP processes
• Optimized setting for SAP
• Integrated DB Administration.
Parallel database with DB2 data sharing on System z is a unique SAP certified scale-out solution that allows zero downtime
Figure 23: F&R mass test with SVC
maintenance and upgrades of the DB management system itself.
POWER6 595
64 CPUs 5GHz
Few Disks
SAN Volume Controller
Small Managed Disk
Customer Group 1 (80 Disks) Many Disks
Virtual Ethernet Backbone
F&R CI + DB Virtual Medium Managed Disk
Disk load Group 2 (160 Disks)
Max
Load Managed Disk
Group 3 (320 Disks) Lots of Disks
F&R AS
DS8300 Turbo
Dual Frame
Figure 23: F&R mass test with SVC
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Conclusions
The IBM infrastructure fusion with the SAP Retail application provides a solution for retailers of all sizes. Through a rigorous deep dive
using the Trilogy components in a near real-life implementation, IBM and SAP demonstrated support for the most demanding of retail
environments.
Strategic clarity
With its comprehensive set of integrated business solutions, the SAP for Retail portfolio gives you the means and tools to drive your
strategy through to execution. It will help you understand your shoppers’ preferences and react to demand while providing real-time
visibility across your organization to proactively manage your business. This project demonstrated that the SAP for Retail portfolio
operating on a choice of IBM infrastructure supports the critical retail processes involving extreme data volumes that need to be
processed during demanding overnight time constraints.
Increased assurance
The joint Retail Trilogy project demonstrates that retail-specific business processes are well understood. The performance tests and
system landscape deployed accurately reflect retailer needs, while the high volumes and configuration options represent real
requirements. As a result, sizing recommendations are validated for medium and large customers while allowing for growth; and
customers can have confidence in well-justified total cost of ownership (TCO) scenarios for various IBM and SAP solution options.
Maximum performance at optimum cost
This project demonstrated that the time-critical overnight processing can be completed within defined time windows for both normal
and extreme volumes on a cost-effective configuration. IBM technologies including virtualization, DB2 database and enterprise
storage systems were essential to meeting these demands. The test results enable more precision in planning retailer configurations
and take into account the optimal resource utilization achieved on IBM platforms. In addition, IBM platforms are designed to deliver
the highest levels of reliability and serviceability, while offering solutions for the most demanding availability requirements.
Operational excellence
With their combined industry expertise IBM and SAP can ensure the business efficiency of your retail solution. SAP for Retail solutions
provide the essential business functions across the entire value chain from manufacturers through suppliers and retailers to
consumers, with optimized processes and controls. IBM has been part of every significant technology innovation in retail, including
point-of-sale systems, bar code and radio-frequency technology, as well as e-commerce.
Reassurance from SAP and IbM
The results convincingly demonstrate the viability and value that SAP and IBM technology brings to the retail industry. IBM and SAP
are ready to support your organization in assuring your implementation.
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